


Perchance To Dream

by jessebee



Series: Second Chances [2]
Category: Law & Order
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Older Man/Younger Man, Pre-Slash, Slash, Spooky, Weirdness, kinda-sorta sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd better take a fool's advice...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perchance To Dream

**Author's Note:**

> 5/13/2004  
> Parts of this story were first written as the original continuation of "Five Inches Over," but I decided against including them, feeling that the story worked better as a gen piece with something of an open ending. I later gathered those parts up and fashioned them into this little slash thing in response to a challenge on one of the L&O comms, and it's been mouldering on my hard drive since them. Whether this story is seen as the sequel to "Five Inches Over" is completely up to the reader - I've never quite made up my mind either.

**Perchance To Dream**

 

Shock skittered cold down his spine, trickled wetly across his neck. God, where was he? It was – he was at – he was hearing –

 

The soft sound of somebody almost – but not quite – snoring.

 

He sucked in a sharp, jerky breath. The snoring abruptly stopped.

 

"Len?" The voice, slurred and husky with sleep, came from behind him. A warm hand touched, slid over his shoulder. "Y're okay, I gotcha. Wha's wrong?"

 

Lennie Briscoe tried to relax, pressing back into the touch, luxuriating in the simple comfort of another human being close to him. Corrected himself a moment later – there was nothing simple about this. _Nothing simple at all, starting with how long it took us to get here, finally catch a clue about what was right under our respective noses._ "Weird dream, is all. I'm good."

 

"Mmm, yeah, y'are, but that's another story." The mattress shifted, and a solid body warmed the length of his back as his lover spooned up tight. "Same one as before?" Mike Logan murmured in his ear, broad hand now stroking down his arm.

 

He didn't want to talk about it, but he knew it would help if he did. "Kinda," he sighed, keeping his eyes closed. He breathed in the smells of them together and the remnants of Mike's cologne, soaking up the feel of the other man's skin against his. "Found your – body in Central Park, worked the case, went to your wake. But then I – well – 'woke up' to find that it was a kind of premonition, that it hadn't happened yet, so I went runnin' hellbent for leather into the Park, and …. "

 

Mike squeezed his arm. "And … too late?" he asked softly, when Lennie was quiet.

 

"No, not this time." Lennie shook his head against the pillow. "I made it, and you got off with a bullet graze."

 

He fell silent again, and there was only the whisper of breathing, his own and Mike's, and the muffled night-sounds of the city outside.

 

"Then … what? There's something else, a happy ending shouldn't've woke you up like that," Mike said eventually, shifting. Lennie finally opened his eyes and turned his head. Mike was propped up over him now, and Lennie could just see his face in the halflight.

 

"It was …," Lennie struggled to find a different word, and gave up. "Weird. It was just really weird, Mike. It was so damn **real** , I can't tell you. Every time, I'd've sworn I was awake, and then …. "

 

He shrugged, a bit helplessly, and Mike squeezed his biceps again, caring written plainly across his handsome features. "Tell you what," he said after a minute, leaning in to kiss Lennie's temple. The hand stroking Lennie's arm and shoulder slid around, caressing across his chest and slipping through the graying curls there, and the caring look segued into something a little more – lascivious. "How 'bout I do you a little demo on just what's real here?"

 

Lennie just had to snicker. That was so damn **Mike**. "Is that your cure for everything?" he teased, running his own hand back across the firm thigh close behind his.

 

Mike grinned, his teeth a white flash in the dimness. "'Till somebody makes a better one, you bet it is." The younger man leaned in again and this time Lennie tilted his face up, meeting the full lips with his own. Strong fingers found and tweaked his nipple as Mike deepened the kiss, sending a delicious shiver through him. He closed his eyes again to lose himself in the pleasures of Mike's mouth.

 

Without breaking contact, Mike shifted again, throwing a long leg over Lennie's to hold him close, and sliding that hand down his chest and stomach to rub familiarly over the awakening bulge at his groin.

 

Lennie arched happily into it, wrapped up and held against Mike's body, his own arm trapped by Mike's arm flung over it. He was cocooned in warmth, Mike's heat and the heat they were generating together. Maybe even a little too warm .… He pushed against Mike's hold, trying to get loose enough to turn onto his back.

 

Mike wouldn't let go.

 

"Mike, ease up a little, lemme – "

 

"Don't go, Lennie."

 

What? Lennie's brow creased, even as he tried again. "I'm not leaving, just wanna roll over so – "

 

Mike held him tighter. "Don't go."

 

Lennie pushed harder – he loved the man, but now he really needed to move. "Mike, let go already. Told you, 'm not going anywhere."

 

"But you are." Why in hell did Mike sound so sad? "Promise me something, Lennie. Pick up the phone."

 

"What the hell are you talking about?"

 

"Just – please. Pick up the phone."

 

"Mike?" Another twist and roll and –

 

"Mike!"

 

The sound echoed oddly as his eyes snapped open. It took a few seconds for his vision to clear, shapes resolving into the familiar furniture of his cramped bedroom.

 

His cramped, solitary bedroom.

 

The arms holding him close were the tangled sheets of his bed; the heat he was feeling was his own and the hot air of the room, the sticky heat of an airless New York City July.

 

The next sound in the room was his own voice as well. "Jesus Goddamn Fucking **Christ**."

 

Lennie collapsed back against the pillow, swearing, as he wrestled with the sheet, his heart rate, and as stiff a hard-on as he'd had in years. "Not again. God **Almighty**."

 

It was the third dream like that he'd had in the last week, but that had been far and away the most elaborate, the most detailed. The most real.

 

He got the sheets unknotted and flung them aside, flopping onto his back, arms outstretched and digging into the mattress to keep his hands from wrapping around his aching erection. He really needed to come. But more urgent than that, he needed to think.

 

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked the ceiling, then closed his eyes as the answer came back.

 

Oh, please. Give it up, Briscoe, you know what's going on. Same thing that's been building, and that you've been ignoring, since 1993.

 

 _You're saying that I've been lusting after Mike Logan's ass since we were partnered?_ Lennie tried for incredulous, and failed miserably.

 

From somewhere, he'd swear he heard the sound of clapping. _Very good. So, now that you're_ _ **finally**_ _awake, what are you gonna do about it?_

 

"What the hell am I **supposed** to do about it!?" he snapped out loud, hot and irritable and horny and frustrated right out to the end of his rope.

 

A long-suffering, disappointed silence, like a parent with a child that's slow to see the glaringly obvious. _Second chances, Briscoe. Take a good, hard look, because they don't usually come again._

 

"Pick up the phone."

 

It was what Mike had said back in 1995 when the younger detective's actions had broken up their partnership and had gotten him exiled. What Mike had said nearly every time they'd seen each other since then.

 

"Just pick up the phone, Lennie, anytime, and give me a call."

 

But Lennie rarely had, because Mike called him sometimes to say "let's get together for dinner, let's shoot a little stick, let's throw some darts 'cause I can beat your ass there – "

 

And that was okay because hey, he'd give Mike a ring next week, there was always time, right?

 

Right?

 

Lennie turned his head to stare at the clock on his bedside table, and the telephone right next to it. He felt his own pulse rapid in his neck, felt sweat spring up that had nothing to do with the heat. Then he reached out, picked up the receiver. Punched in the number that he'd never forgotten. Held his breath as he listened to it ring once, twice, three times –

 

"Logan."

 

He breathed. "Hey, Mike."

 

A startled pause on the other end, and then – " **Lennie**? Hey, good to hear from you! Why so early, though? Something up?" Mike sounded genuinely happy for the call, but there was concern in his voice as well.

 

 _Yeah, I'm_ _ **up**_ _alright, and it's_ _ **your**_ _damn fault,_ Lennie wanted to say for a single, insane moment, but forced the remark back down to his crotch where it belonged. "Did I wake you?" he asked instead.

 

"Nah, actually, I was already moving, thinking of going for a run before it gets too hot. Y'know, maybe go over to the Park."

 

The Park. Central Park. In his dream, they'd found Mike's body in Central Park. **God**.

 

"Nah, it's already too hot," Lennie quipped, fighting to keep his voice casual. "Tell you what, how 'bout you meet me for breakfast, instead? That deli on 49th? It'll be nostalgic, like every time we got dragged out at some insane time to look at a stiff."

 

Another pause, and in his mind's eye Lennie could see Mike's eyebrows coming down in that so-familiar questioning “look”. "Considering it's five am, that fits," his former partner replied. "And I never turn down free food, so you're on. But – what's going on, Len? You didn't call me outta the blue just 'cause you missed my face."

 

Lennie closed his eyes. Took a mental step forward. "What if I did?"  
  


A third pause, this one longer and hushed, pregnant with all kinds of possibilities.

 

"Well," Mike said finally, and Lennie nearly sighed in relief at the warmth in the now slightly-deeper voice. "I'd say that's just fine, then. Meet you in what, half an hour?"

 

"That'd be good."

 

"Later." And the line went dead.

 

Lennie clicked off his phone and let it drop to the pillow next to him, blowing out an explosive breath. He'd done it. **What** he'd done, exactly, he wasn't sure, but he'd done **something**. A snatch of song drifted through his mind – " _This could be the start of something new …."_

 

He opened his eyes and smiled. Reality looked a little brighter now, and it had nothing to do with the sun.

 

 

Finis


End file.
